Welcome to my blog. I am a full time primarily technical forex trader. I am going to start keeping this blog primarily as my trading journal for my personal use. In this way, I hope to better keep myself accountable, keep track of my winning and losing trades, and occasionally brain storm and share thoughts about the market, life and whatever else may catch my interest at the time.

While I intend to keep the blog public, I do not plan on any particular public following or input. Again, this is primarily my trading journal. I am not starting a trading service or anything like that. I will illustrate trades that I have taken, plan on taking or should have taken. (as well as ones that didn’t work out well) If you are reading this and have any input feel free to email me at tim.kosen@gmail.com or find me on twitter @kosentrade. Thank you for stopping by.

Entries: 1: at current day’s consolidation just prior to tops to catch a move, 2: at tops of that daily consolidation 3: at spike of tops and at consolidation a few days before 2-1-17 ish consolidation 4: further into that prior consolidation.

Additional orders at prior spike highs not reached in this trade

Note on entries: small entry orders with leverage and risk management in mind to reduce maximum exposure.

This was looking to catch a minor swing move lower that did not materialize. Instead, it caught some pips into consolidation. As consolidation formed and as lows were not agressively taken out, it became less likely we would see a significant retracement or trend change late in the trading day. Trade was closed out in mid Asian session with the intent of taking profit and re-shorting further up in the Euro session. Those entries triggered overnight, with adjusted and corrected position sizing taken into account and are currently in play.

Target: Initial short term target was .382 retracement of prior minor move long with the desire to hold for a deeper pullback should it happen. As we had trouble breaking and holding below the .23 and considering the time of day the final attempt lower was made – the trade was manually closed at rejection of prior lows. (On my phone at the gym during leg’s day I might add.)

Result:+47+31+21+2.3 = 101.9 not accounting for added position size on the scale short.

20/20 Hindsight: Not bad entries. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just buy into the direction of a trend more often. That would seem like a more straightforward approach here. But, pips is pips.

H4 Eur/Usd showing the fib retracement and shorting at prior consolidation higher, Last red arrow is current short trade triggered overnight

H1 Eur/Usd showing entry and exit levels and price not making it convincingly below the .23 retracement.

note on entries: I drew the fib to the bottom of closed candle price action on the bottom rather than the spike lower because that lined the fibs up better with consolidation zones. I don’t always draw it like this.

Target: All targets placed by orders, and in this case .382 of move lower. If I were day trading, it would have been useful to look at price action in addition and likely hold the move longer. But, move spiked on Trump Press conference so sometimes it’s better to take profit when it’s there.

Result: -4-19+12+44=33 not accounting for added position size on the scale long.

20/20 Hindsight: Great entries and exit for setting orders. Should have held longer or watched if in front of the screen.

Trade: Scale short on .5 and .618 retracements of prior swing move. Did not place additional pending orders at prior highs because I wanted to limit exposure.

Ended up holding the trade because target not met and price moved higher, but did not take our previous highs. Closed the GBP/USD short at the bottom to limit additional exposure. Elected not to place additional short entry at top consolidation because didn’t want additional exposure at the FOMC announcement. Rational was, if price moved higher, I could pick a better entry and if price moved lower anyway, we could close the trade at close to break even. (second option occurred)

As it turned out, adding would have worked, but I don’t think warranted in this trade.

Target: initial short target not met and was slightly better than break even. Over the weekend, moved the target up to about break even.

This level coinsided with liquidity drying up mid-London and prior to NY opening. Price failed to break down from here so the trade was manually closed overnight / appx 4:30AM. Daily and weekly charts are changing my bias to the long side, so I liked this area for buying the Eur/Usd with options to add farther down (did not go long) – but that trade would have been up over 50 pips throughout the day. This further justified closing the trade at this potential buy level.

Pips: =0 +/- a few (I think actually “-” just a few with commission etc.)

20/20 Hindsight: Not bad management or entries. Perhaps I should have moved stops down after second wave lower, or could have added at 1st move above the last entry, but I didn’t want to manage the trade that much.

20/20 Hindsight: Good exit and close before FOMC day. Next time, perhaps don’t short the GBP and EUR the evening before FOMC, less movement, and flexability if things go wrong. Otherwise, good entries, management and trade exit.

Chart 1: H4, entries at fibs, topping pattern and MA

Chart 2: M15, exits on Fib retracement of prior move higher (next time consider TP a little quicker or trail stops, that was a little too close to the spike long before the FOMC move. Consider moving stops down to consolidation pattern rather than a hard tp)

Trade:originally a short scalp on low liquidity between Christmas and NY – turned into a scale short swing trade after a large spike higher in price. This low liquidity spike was not significantly followed by any other pairs lending one to believe it would not follow through on the eur/usd and that price would continue its short move at least back to prior consolidation.
Entries: Short 1-3 were several small short entries at prior day’s highs with short term take profit targets.

Entries 2: Short 4-5 scale short on the liquidity spike and on prior fib retracements

Entries 3: Short 6-8 Additional scale short on overnight low liquidity spike – entered manually on phone trading and included appx 10 pips of slippage on each trade (adding up to a significant amount) / when trading in low liquidity conditions with a faster moving market, consider entry orders when practical rather than market orders especially on the mobile device. The last trade #8, I placed just to verify the amount of slippage.

Target: Final target was a frontrun of the .618 retracement of the most recent minor swing move higher on m5 chart shown below.

Generally, I would target a little higher on the fib for this trade, but the H4 chart showed a significant breakdown and close of prior lows with the next sensible target being prior h4 highs and .618 retracement of the move higher. Breakdown of shaded area shown on the graph (top shaded area) and target of lower shaded area also shown. (chart 3 below)

Pips: -35-10+7+22+55+74+81+87 = 282 (non weighted for position size)

20/20 Hindsight: Would not recommend this trade setup under normal market conditions. This is a good example of the importance of knowing the market you’re trading. This trade was taken with low position size and acceptable risk management. The only reason I was comfortable adding to the position on the spikes higher was because of the christmas – new year market conditions. There was a high likelihood the move higher would lack followthrough and would retrace significantly rather than begin a new impulsive move to the long side.

Final exit appears appropriate. May consider the aforementioned price / m5 crossover for a more aggressive take profit rather than standard take profit on favorable levels. That would require additional trade management however and we can’t be watching the markets all the time.

In this instance, that exit would have yielded appx 13 additional pips. Something to think about.

Also, consider revision of policy of not trading between new Christmas and New Years. This was a nice move.

Chart 1: h4shows initial shorts on prior highs for small move to the short side and additional entries higher

Chart 2: m15 – Closeup of additional entries showing scale short

Chart 3: H4 showing price breakdown of top shaded level, sig. trendline break – at the time, any potential short term upside moves (overnight / London open) looked like we could reasonably expect them to be limited to short term h4 consolidation in the preceding few candles. (who knows if that’s reasonable or not, but it worked so that’s cool.) Take profit was a fairly aggressive level in terms of length of move. But at the time it appeared to be the the most sen sensible place for price to meet resistance perhaps prior to NY open. Considering the last bit of this move played out as expected we can call it a successful trade though not ideal.

Chart 4: M5 – final take profit of trade on the .618 retracement of prior swing move higher. Also shows how the price / m5 ma crossover would have given a few more pips. (appx 13)

Chart 5: M1 (don’t trade off M1 charts, but included here to show entries) – price slipped on those last 3 entries by appx 10 pips each. Likely due to mobile device trading combined with market orders. At least on the mobile device, price, the graph and entries don’t line up as well as they should when price is moving quickly.

Trade: Pre-London orders set on prior resistance and higher level fibs
Entries: 2 scale short on most recent m5 high. 1 scale short at prior highs and final scale short on .382 fib retracement of recent move short with orders to short at .5 retracement if price gets there
Target: Bottom of prior consolidation zone and frontrun of .5 fib retracement of most recent m15 move north
Pips: +25+28+36+45=134
20/20 Hindsight: Overall, a very good trade. Excellent entries. Absoluteley out too early on the move but still caught a good portion of it. Consider a M5 MA / Price crossover as more of a guideline for exits in combination with support and resistance. Just a thought. It’s never fun to leave 50% of a move on the table. But, you have to take profit somewhere.

Also, consider revision of policy of not trading between new Christmas and New Years. This was a nice move.

Chart 1: H1 shows recent tops, and fib retracements with additional orders still in place

Chart 2: M 15, fib and support zone take profit area

Chart 3: M 5, consider additional criteria for TP as we missed a lot of this move. M5 ma, price crossover perhaps in combination with support / resistance